章 1080: 22
Chapter 21-Forever Fall part IV
Giant sinkhole area
Harry groaned as he sat up, letting loose rubble fall off him. He looked around the immediate area with a frown as he surveyed the destruction he caused. The Earth Rending spell made quite the impressive hole in the ground, and the wolf Faunus couldn't help but appreciate the power of the spell.
'Don't you DARE think of how impressive that spell was!' Padfoot snarled, making Harry wince. 'You could have damn near killed yourself and your friends with this stupid maneuver!'
'I'm sorry! I couldn't think of anything else!' Harry replied.
'That is no excuse for such folly!' the Grim snarled again. 'My old master may have taken risks, but even HE knew when to tone it down!'
'Ok! Ok! I get it!' Harry complained, wanting to prevent the headache coming on. He shook his head and said aloud, "Alright. Who's not dead? Sound off."
The sound of groaning sounded off as rubble shifted near him. Velvet sat up with a whine as she shook the dust off her form, her rabbit ears flopping cutely atop her head. "I'm alive," she mumbled, sounding light-headed.
"Still here, no thanks to you!" Whitley's voice shouted out as his drone maneuvered out of a small niche in the wall. "What the hell were you thinking, Potter?! That was extremely, fucking reckless! Even for you!"
"I panicked, ok?!"
"You panicked?!"
"I was crunched for time, and a freaking Minotaur trying to kill Velvet and me, then try and crush your drone! I had the right to panic!"
"You could've thought of something better than this!"
"I didn't see you contributing!"
"ENOUGH!" The sudden shout erupted from their sides, causing them to look wide-eyed at a frazzled Velvet. "W-What's done is done! L-Let's just leave it like that, ok?!"
The two looked at her with gob smacked expressions. However, they shook their heads of the fog and nodded slowly. "Sure thing," Harry said.
"Yeah, probably for the best now," Whitley agreed with a nod.
"HEEEEYYYYYYY!" The three looked up to see a white streak at one end of the hole. Summer looked shocked at them. "WAIT! GREEN EYES?! BUNNY EARS?! WHAT HELL'S GOIN ON HERE?!" she shouted as she vanished and reappeared in front of them, a stern glare in place.
The three squirmed under her firm glower. "W-Well…" Velvet stuttered. "W-We…"
"It's my fault, Professor," Harry said. Summer looked to him. "Whitley and I-" He gestured to Whitley's drone. Whitley waved- "-were attempting to find something we've been tracking around Remnant for years now, and I invited Velvet along. Well…" Harry looked sheepish. "Long story short, we found it, found a very dangerous Grimm guarding it, and I used a very powerful spell to try and kill it."
Summer raised an eyebrow. "What on Remnant were you three looking-"
"l LIVE!" Startled, the four turned to the side and saw Jaune rising out of the rubble like a zombie. He looked around and saw Summer, Harry, and Velvet and waved. "Hey guys. How's it going?" he asked.
"WE SHOULD BE ASKING YOU THAT?!" the four shouted.
"What the hell are you doing buried under all this rubble, Scrawny?!" Summer asked. Jaune blinked in confusion before his brain caught up with the situation.
"Not sure," he admitted. "All I remember was listening to Lily talk about Night wavers, then the ground shook, then the next minute, I'm waking up under a ton or rocks!"
"Yeah, seems to be the prevailing trend today," Whitley snarked, giving Harry a dirty look. Harry replied with a similar look.
"Well, then, it appears we need to search for Nightingale now," Summer announced. "Alright, you lot! Fan out! Search every nook and cranny! Make sure Nightingale hasn't keeled over!"
"Y-Yes, ma'am!" Velvet called out.
"Roger, roger," Whitley commented.
"Way ahead of you, Professor!" Harry said.
"Right!" Jaune commented as he sifted through the rubble to find Crocea Mors. "Though, I'm sure she's fine. I mean this IS the girl who-" Suddenly, a hand shot out of the rubble and latched around Jaune's neck. "ACK!"
They all turned to see what was wrong when the hand twisted and threw Jaune away. The blonde cried out in shock as he hit a boulder and shattered it. "JAUNE!" Velvet shouted, but stopped when she heard a dark, sinister chuckling.
"Worried about the loser, are you? I'd be more worried about yourself, you dirty animal!" a voice chuckled, which was revealed to belong to Cardin Winchester rising out of the rubble, wiping off the loose dust and black gunk on his armor. However, they could easily see something was wrong with him.
The whites of his eyes were solid black, while his indigo eyes were dulled and shining with malevolent intent. His smile showed his teeth while dark chuckles escaped his throat. Harry noticed, with some amount of dread, Cardin was radiating a faint sense of dark magic, the same magic as the Grimm pits!
'Did he fall into the pits?' the wolf Faunus wondered. Cardin shook his head, making the black tar fly off his head, then locked eyes with Harry. The orange haired teen growled, leering at the young wizard.
"YOU!" he shouted. "I am going to enjoy ripping you to pieces!" He took a menacing step forward, making Velvet flinch back.
However, before he could walk over, a boulder shot off the ground and hit Cardin, sending him flying through the air. Suddenly, the air became thick with dark magic. Harry shivered at the oppressive feeling washed over him, then he noticed mad cackles had begun to fill the area. He stiffened. Those chuckles sounded…like…
He turned to the source, and paled when he saw Lily crawling out of the rubble, looking like she too had fallen into the Grimm pits. The black tar-like substance clung to her clothing and caked her hair; the whites of her eyes were solid black. A wide, teeth showing smile slid across her face, and her green eyes, the same shade of Avada Kadavra green as Harry's, glowed eerily.
What was even worse, was the fact that the magic in the air seemed to intensify.
'Oh, bugger,' Harry groaned mentally.
Lily laughed loudly. "Whoa! I feel…Hehehehehe…I feel like a new woman!" she giggled crazily. "I've never felt like this before!"
Cardin finally recovered from being crushed by the boulder and growled savagely. "You little bitch!" he snarled. "I'll kill you!" Lily looked to him, and smiled darkly.
"So the braindead racist thinks he can kill me?! Ha! That's a laugh!" she laughed mockingly. "Prove it, asshole!" she barked, gesturing at him to 'come on.' Cardin roared and bolted towards her, but Lily responded by grabbing a large piece of rubble, about the size of a wrecking ball. She threw it at the charging teen, but the orange haired teen punched it, destroying the rock. He kicked a similar sized rock at her, but she responded by destroying it with her hand.
Only, it didn't break apart. With a flash of light when her hand connected, the boulder ricocheted back at a shocked Cardin, who barely dodged the projectile. Lily blinked down at her hand, before laughing joyfully.
"I don't know what that was, but I like it!" She was about to say more, but Cardin tackled her, making her grunt as they began to roll across the ground, trying to wail on each used the distraction to race over to Jaune. Whitley's drone, Velvet, and Summer followed him.
"Jaune! Are you alright?!" Harry asked urgently.
Jaune waved him off and stood shakily. "I'm fine! But what's wrong with Lily and Cardin?!" he asked in concern.
Harry, Whitley, and Velvet looked at each other. "We're not entirely sure," Whitley admitted. "We…it's…complicated," he sighed dejectedly.
"Un-complicate it, then," Summer ordered with a frown.
Velvet shifted uncomfortably under the glare. "W-Well, w-we were investigating s-something, and-"
"Whitley found a massive source of magic in this area," Harry explained curtly, cutting Velvet off. He turned to her and nodded, making her release a relieved sigh. "I asked Velvet to aid the two of us and we soon discovered tar-like pits inside of a cave. Here." He pointed to the area around them. "The tar is actually concentrated dark magic that creates the Creatures of Grimm."
Jaune and Summer paled.
"After discovering this, we encountered a powerful Grimm and I was forced to use the Earth Rending spell to try and kill it," Harry finished. "I'll freely admit that the Earth Rending spell was a bad spell to use in this situation, but I was crunched for time, and I wanted to make sure it died."
"A-Alright," Jaune stuttered. "W-What about Cardin and Lily?" he asked, deciding to worry about the Grimm pit thingys later.
Harry shook his head. "I can only assume that they fell into the pits and ingested the sludge," he said. "The concentration of magic must have supercharged any latent magic in their systems, and since the gunk is Dark Magic…"
"It's warping their minds," Summer finished grimly.
"Then we have to help them!" Jaune shouted, quickly rising to his feet.
"Heeeeyyyyyyy!"
"Anybody alive down there?!"
"What the heck's going on here?!"
"Harry James Potter, what have you done now?!"
Harry deadpanned at Weiss's voice. "Why's she blaming me?"
"Because she knows it's your fault," Whitley told him, deadpanning at the older teen.
The hunters in training began making their way down into the sinkhole. However, a massive black furred arm holding a crude axe broke through the rubble next to Summer with a loud snarl. The four near the arm let out tiny 'meps' as their faces twisted into shocked fear as the white bone covered head of the Minotaur broke free from the rubble.
The giant Grimm set its eyes on the group and growled menacingly, only for a streak of grey, black, pink, and red to sail out of the woods above the sinkhole and land feet first on the Minotaur's face. It roared in shock as it was propelled backwards, revealing its attackers to be…
"R-Ruby?!" Summer shouted. "Hammer chick?!"
Both girls were breathless. "That…was…AWESOME!" the younger of the two shouted, throwing her hands up.
"Hehe…Told you so!" Nora boasted. "Nothing beats a bucking Ursa!"
"We have to do that again!"
"Ruby Rose, if I ever catch you doing so reckless, you're grounded until you finally graduate!" Summer growled, making the red cloaked scythe wielder pale as she whirled to see her mother looking at her with a ferociously disappointed stare.
Suddenly, the Minotaur freed itself from the wall, and Cardin punched Lily into another wall, making her grunt in pain. The other student pairs had made it down the crater's walls and ran to Summer and the others. Yang looked over to Lily and Cardin and shouted, "What the hell's going on here?!"
"Minotaur!" Isabella gasped as the massive Grimm raced towards them, only for a brown streak to appear and land feet first on the Grimm's head. The streak pushed off hard, making the Grimm yowl in annoyance as it was thrown away from the group, and the streak was revealed to be Ragnar.
"Sweet Jesus, that's a big one!" Ragnar shouted, looking surprised at the Grimm's sheer bulk.
"Ragnar!" Pyrrha called out, jumping out of the forest and landed next to her temporary partner.
"What's going on here?!" Adam demanded, turning to the group.
"Explanations later!" Harry shouted. "Right now, we've got bigger problems!"
"Then what should we do?" Isabella asked. Harry looked to the Minotaur, which was picking itself up, then to Cardin and Lily fighting. He gritted his teeth.
"We divide and conquer!" Summer said tonelessly. "Green eyes, you take Ruby, Valkyrie, Taurus, Bunny Ears, Foxy, and Schnee and try and knock some sense into Nightingale and Winchester. The rest of us will take care of the Minotaur." She frowned at them. "What are you lot waiting for! Get the led out! Move!"
That was all it took for the hunters-in-training to snap into action. "Whitley! Scan the sample!" Harry ordered, and bolted forward to the magically charged teens. "Weiss! Velvet! Izzy! Hold Winchester back while Nora, Adam, Ruby and I take care of Lily!"
"Way ahead of you!" Whitley shouted back as he began opening the programs he needed.
"Roger!" Izabella, Weiss, and Velvet shouted back, and raced towards Cardin.
"Valkyrie! Go for her arm! I'll grab the other!" Adam said jumping forward.
"Got it!" the orange haired girl agreed readily and bolted forward. She and Adam ran around Cardin and towards their target, leaving Weiss, Velvet, and Izabella to grab Cardin. He growled furiously as he tried to shake them off. Weiss appeared in front of him and held Myrtenaster level with his face.
"Stand down, Winchester," she spoke coldly. "This doesn't have to get ugly." Cardin snarled.
"Like hell I'm going to listen to a bitch who sells herself to a bunch of animals!" he shouted and threw Izabella and Velvet off him.
Meanwhile, Nora and Adam appeared in front of Lily, who was confused as to why her prey was being stolen from her, and grabbed her arms. Shock giving way to annoyance, she growled at them and attempted to shake them off.
"Lily, please calm down!" Ruby tried to reason, hands in front of Lily's face. "You don't want to do this!"
"Oh, but that's the thing Ruby. I DO!" Lily told the younger girl. "Cardin needs to be brought down a few pegs for his arrogance! And he decided I'm the one that should do it!"
"But you or him might get hurt!" Ruby protested. "Or worse, BOTH of you!"
"I'm not afraid of pain!" Lily shouted. "And who the hell cares about Cardin?!"
"Lily, do you even hear yourself?" Harry asked calmly coming into view. "You've never talked like this! Wake up!"
Lily looked to him and, to the others' surprise, her dark look softened. "Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry…" she giggled. "You should leave the peacekeeper position for Izzy. You know you suck at it."
"I'm very aware, but I'm your partner, and I'm hoping you'll at least hear me out," Harry retorted. Lily nodded in agreement.
"Of course, of course!" she chirped. "Why wouldn't I? We're a team! You and I! Best buds! The Alpha dogs! The dream team! I'm the brawn, and you're madness! I'm the question, and you have the answers! I don't have a past, yet you know about it!" The last part confused the group.
"What are you talking about?" Adam questioned hardly. Lily giggled at him.
"The voices of course!" she explained, as if it were obvious. "They constantly talk about my fate all the time! They scream I should lose my memory! Or be all some old guys'! Ha! Like I'd want to be that guy's anything! While the REALLY really old voice says I should just die! Can you believe that?! DIE! Like I was unworthy of living!
"Well, screw the voices! I like living, and they can't take me away! I won't let them! And once I get Harry to tell me who they are, I'm going to rip their hearts out of their chests for everything they've done!" Lily finished with a snarl.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up, Lily!" Ruby snapped, coming back into Lily's line of sight. "What do you mean, 'when Harry tells you who they are?' How would he know?"
"Because they mentioned his name, of course!" Lily answered with a deranged smile. "They keep screaming 'Potter! Potter!', and we all know that's Harry's last name! He's GOT to know something! Why else would they scream his name so angrily?!"
Harry couldn't help the cold twinge of dread that crept down his spine. "I…can think of a few reasons…" he admitted. "How about we talk about it later?"
Lily laughed. "Certainly! AFTER I beat the shit out of Winchester!" she said, quickly shaking off Adam and Nora with surprising amount of strength. They tried to hold on, but Lily quickly got away from them, but Harry was quick to flash his wand in the redhead's face.
"Stupefy!" Lily cried out as she was thrown into the wall, cracking it. She groaned and pulled herself out of the wall. Shaking her head of a sudden fogginess that overcame her, she looked over and glared at Harry.
"What the hell was that?!" she shouted at him.
He blinked owlishly. "That is the first time I've seen the stunning spell not work," he said audibly.
Lily shrieked and jumped at the wolf Faunus, only for Adam and Nora to grab her again and try and wrestle her to the ground. Lily snarled and pushed them off, but Adam quickly repositioned himself so she couldn't shake him off so easily, but Lily jumped backwards and slammed him into the wall of the crater. Adam grunted, and Lily repeated her action again and again, making Adam grit his teeth.
'Dammit. Her strength is unreal! I haven't felt my Aura take such a serious dip like this in years!' he thought, tightening his grip.
Lily laughed. "Sorry Adam, but you won't be able to hold me much longer! My semblance, Limit Removal, allows me to release my brains limitations on my body, as you know. But you wanna know the secret!" She smiled evilly. "It…" She slammed him into the wall again, harder this time. "Never…" She slammed him again. "Turns…" She backed off a moment, and prepared for a jump. "OFF!" She threw herself into the wall, shattering it until large pieces fell around them.
Adam groaned in pain. Lily laughed as his grip loosened. "Do you really think you can hold me down, Taurus?! I'm by far THE strongest member of HAIL!" she boasted. She grabbed one of his horns and pulled, making the Faunus grit his teeth as she worked to pull it off. "You are nothing!"
She attempted to pull harder, but then a bladed whip wrapped around her wrist. She growled and quickly released Adam's horn to grab the whip, but she yelped in surprise when she received a painful electric shock. This was all the distraction Nora needed to grab Maghild and slam it into Lily's chest. She gasped in pain as she was thrown into the crater wall again.
She wasn't given a reprieve, because Harry suddenly appeared before her and raised his wand. He was about to shout out an incantation, when Cardin, having been kicked by Velvet, flew into him, throwing into Lily. He grunted, and Lily used the interference to knee him in the groin. Harry's eyes widened in pain as the air left his lungs and he dropped to the ground.
"C-Cheap shot!" he mumbled through the pain.
"Maybe, but it keeps you down until I'm ready to deal with you!" Lily snarled, only for Izabella to jump over Harry and drop kick Lily back into the wall. Lily snarled. "You wanna go too, Izzy?!" she screamed.
"If it means getting my friend back, sure," Izabella said coolly, readying Painbringer.
"Got you, you filthy fox!" Cardin shouted and jumped at Izabella. Izabella only had time to turn around in shock as the mad hunter in training closed in on her. Luckily, a shadow appeared in front of her, and he stopped midway, letting out a girlish squeal before he was propelled back while holding his genitals.
"Alright, I am starting to get annoyed," came the low, flat response from Harry Potter. Both girls froze. "I'm having to fight my partner while she's charm drunk on Dark Magic, got hit in the balls by said partner, and then forced to punch the balls of another guy just to keep him from stepping on my face." Harry's eyes glowed eerily as he turned to Lily. "I'm done screwing around now. DEPULSO!" Lily shouted out in surprise as she was thrown back into the wall. The impact shattered the entire wall face, making large slabs of rock fall at the group. Harry waved his wand again. "Reducio!" Suddenly, the massive chunks shrunk until they were only the size of tiny pebbles and landed harmlessly on the ground.
"You bastard!" Cardin snarled after he recovered. He raced towards Harry but was stopped by a glyph. Weiss appeared in front of him and slashed Myrtenaster across his armor in a flurry of rapid fire strikes. He growled and tried to hit her, but she used a glyph under herself and skidded away. Velvet took the chance and deliver a flying kick to the back of Cardin's head. He grunted, but Velvet used her momentum to propel herself around and land three more kicks to his face. As she landed, she latched one of her legs around Cardin's neck and used the leverage to drag him down to the ground. He grunted again as his head connected with the ground.
Ruby stood a little way away from the fight, Crescent Rose resting in her hands in sniper rifle mode. She wasn't sure what to do; on the one hand, she needed to help her friends; but on the other, it would mean harming Cardin and Lily; and Ruby wasn't keen on that. Realistically, she knew she would have to step in soon, but she also knew her usual ways to incapacitate her opponents weren't viable at the moment. Crescent Rose was too large, and her window of opportunities were too small. So, she was left with a support role at the moment, and forced to think of a solution.
"Come on, Ruby, think!" Ruby told herself. "There's got to be something you can do!"
"You know? The first sign you're insane is talking to yourself?" a voice said to her side, making her yelp in fright. "No judging or anything, but I just thought you'd want to know." Ruby turned in the direction of the voice and saw a drone with the visage of a white-haired boy her age on a projected holo-screen.
"W-Who are you?!" she asked.
"Whitley, Weiss's younger brother," he introduced. He frowned and looked off screen. "And am currently irritated because my analysis of this dark magic is leading me around in circles!" Ruby blinked. Whitley? Weiss did mention she had a brother. He looked…surprisingly plain in comparison to Weiss and Harry. She was about to say something when her brain caught up with what he said.
"Dark magic?" she asked. Whitley nodded.
"Yeah. Apparently, Grimm are born of this liquid dark magic, and I'm trying to analyze a sample of the gunk in order to see if we can help Winchester and Nightingale," the Schnee male answered, making Ruby pale. "But I can't find anything of worth! I'm wondering in circles and can't figure out anything! Composition. Concentration of magic. Nothing!" He grumbled something incoherently as he rans his programs again.
Ruby swallowed her apprehension on the subject, and decided to try helping Weiss's plain looking younger brother. "W-Will the…magic gunk…work out of their systems?" she asked.
"Possibly. That's the best solution we got right now. But Nightingale's Semblance and Winchester's apparent bad history with Faunus, I don't think the others will last that long," Whitley explained. "Harry maybe, but that's only if he can knock one out first. With both of them as they are right now, I don't think he can handle them all alone." Ruby picked up on something.
"Cardin's got bad history with Faunus?" she asked. Whitley looked to her.
"Yeah." Ruby looked at Whitley for a moment, then back to her friends trying to hold off Lily and Cardin. Ruby's face hardened.
"Tell me," she ordered, the makings of a plan beginning to form in her mind.
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